Over the last 18 months I’ve been coming to terms with my own mortality. In February I narrowly avoided what could have been a nasty car accident. At a time when an invisible virus could change our fortunes within a week, I’ve never been more keenly aware that this is all temporary.

I’ve known this for a while, spiritually: that impermanence is the only guarantee, and I’ve been relieved to see for myself the field of bliss hiding behind the curtain.

I’m not afraid of death, but I have been thinking a lot about how to respond to the cosmic ephemerality of our own material lives.

There have been chapters of my life where I have sat on the sidelines, and ones where I have checked out of the game completely. But now I see the possibility of divergent endings where I once only saw foregone conclusions, and it seems like a task worthy of each of us.

The possibility—however unlikely—of finding the liberation that we desire is all I need to feel the electricity pulsing through my spine again.

Doing this requires completion. For the weeks after the near-miss I haunted myself imagining the possibility of dying with things left in my drafts folder: unfinished essays, unreleased music, unminted art.

That’s scarier to me than death itself, and so one day at a time I hope to clear out each of my drafts folders and do my best to not let them accumulate ever again.

I can only write from my perspective but I am certain I am not alone in this. I’m curious: what has been a demand for your participation recently?